In many image forming devices such as inkjet printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines, pick mechanisms are provided to pick individual sheets of print media, e.g. paper, from the top of a stack of media sheets that is held in an input tray. Some printers are designed with a removable input tray, thereby allowing the user to gain full access to the tray to load a stack of media sheets. In one conventional input tray design, the input tray contains a ramp with sloped surface at the front end to enable sheet separation during media feeding. However, with this design, the user has often encountered problem aligning the leading edge of the media stack to the front end of the input tray because the sloped surface does not provide a clear indication of a stopping position. Proper positioning of the stack of sheets in the input tray is essential to subsequent performance of the pick mechanism. If the media stack is improperly positioned in the input tray by the user, media feeding failure can result. Improper feeding can cause media jams, skew of the media sheet being fed, or picking of multiple sheets from the input tray.
There exists a need for a removable input tray with an alignment mechanism for proper positioning of a stack of media sheets that is reliable, low cost and easy to implement.